Programs Complement Noguchi Museum Exhibit

The Noguchi Museum presents two special programs in conjunction with the exhibition “The Imagery of Chess Revisited”: The “Second Sundays” program for January is a discussion with guest curator Larry List on Sunday, January 8 at 3 p.m.. Six days later, on Saturday, January 14 from 2 to 5 p.m., Women’s Chess Master Jennifer Shahade plays an open match against any and all takers, in Jennifer Shahade vs. the World.

Guest curator Larry List is an artist, model-maker, and curator. In 2002, List was asked by Noguchi Museum Curator Bonnie Rychlak to replicate the chess pieces that Noguchi made to go with a chess table that the museum had recently acquired. Noguchi had designed the table and pieces for the 1944 exhibition “The Imagery of Chess” at the Julien Levy Gallery, in New York and virtually nothing was known about their material or fabrication. Thus began List’s odyssey, during which he learned not only about the chess pieces, but also about the Levy Gallery exhibition and its cultural context. The result of this fascinating research was “The Imagery of Chess Revisited.”

Women’s Grandmaster Jennifer Shahade is the 2002 and 2004 United States Women’s Chess Master. The 25-year-old Shahade has represented the United States in numerous international competitions. Closer to home, she coaches inner-city youth through the nonprofit Chess-in-the-Schools program, in New York. Her writing has appeared in Chess Life, New In Chess and the Los Angeles Times Book Review , and she has participated in performance art projects at New York’s psychogeography festival, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and The Viewing Room Art Gallery in New York.

The Noguchi Museum is located at 9-01 33rd Rd. at Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City. Sunday shuttle-bus service is available between Manhattan and the museum. For more information, call 718-204-7088 or visit www.noguchi.org. Admission to the lecture and chess tournament is free with museum admission, adults $10; seniors and students $5; children under 12 admitted free.

“The Imagery of Chess Revisited,” on view at the Noguchi Museum through March 12, 2006, is the first major museum exhibition to explore and reprise the 1944–45 exhibition, “The Imagery of Chess”, organized by Surrealist masters Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst for the Julien Levy Gallery, in New York. The two artists—both serious chess players—invited a “who’s who” of their avant-garde contemporaries to redesign the standard chess set or create works that otherwise explored the imagery and symbolism of chess. In addition to Duchamp and Ernst, participants included such famous European expatriates and soon-to-be famous American modernists as Alexander Calder, Arshile Gorky, Man Ray, Robert Motherwell, Isamu Noguchi, Yves Tanguy, and Dorothea Tanning, among others. A resounding popular and critical success, the event marked a turning point in America’s embrace of modernism, which signaled the shift from Paris to New York as the proving ground for avant-garde art.

“The Imagery of Chess Revisited” reunites for the first time in 60 years, some 40 works from this historic gallery show, as well as numerous documentary photographs of the exhibition. Also on view are approximately 40 additional chess-themed works by the show’s participants.

Designed and established in 1985 by Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), the museum presents a comprehensive selection of the artist’s work in interior galleries and an outdoor sculpture garden, all designed by Noguchi. Included is a full range of his works in stone, metal, wood, and clay, as well as models for public projects and gardens, stage sets and his Akari Light Sculptures. The museum’s active program of temporary exhibitions complements its ongoing installation of works from the collection.